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What Do Geek Squad Technicians Actually Do?
Zenitram asks: "I am a lead technician at a company that repairs computers for various vendors. Many of our systems are from Best Buy's Geek Squad. Based on the systems Geek Squad sends us, it makes me wonder what, if anything, do they actually do? We get systems that have issues that we simply shouldn't have to work on, like: installing device drivers, OS reloads, and reseting CRUs (Customer Removable Units). Additionally, we get systems that are misdiagnosed such as: bad hard drive when a system has faulty RAM; no POST when it simply won't boot into Windows; or no boot when it won't power on at all. So, what is the scope of technical repair that Geek Squad techs do?"
>> "One thing I always wondered about. Since Macs are so easy to use, why does it require a "genius" to fix one?"
Simple: It's Apple's way of using marketing to inspire customers' confidence in the services provided. Of course, the Mac Geniuses are light-years more knowledgeable than your average Geek Squad member (and I'm quite convinced that the Genius Bar is the direct inspiration for the Geek Squad). However, customers still need to have the feeling that their problem is in good hands.
Also, a computer is a computer, regardless of the operating system or manufacturer. Even if Macs have much lower failure rates and have much less problematic software issues, the fact remains that customers don't want to have to deal with computer problems themselves... so they turn to an expert--er, that is, a Genius.
I took this awful management class and they talked about Geek Squad like its some sort of Business miracle. We even had to watch a video where they talk about the company and its structure. Aside from their marketing they are really nothing special and time will tell on that as well. Geek Squad is just one of many essentially empty shell IT service organizations that charge a high rate to the end users who go to them because they have established a recognizable brand and then contract most if not all of the actual work out to others.
If you want to see even more disturbing examples of this trend sign up as a provider at onforce.com where a so-called free market for IT services is little more than a way for these empty shell providers to route low paying service calls to "independent contractors" except that marketplace is deliberately skewed so that the providers don't get to enforce their own rates but rather find themselves racing to accept low paying work orders from companies that are nothing more than a catchy name and a 800 number. One of the lowest paying of these companies suspiciously operates out of the same building as Onforce.com (formerly ComputerRepair.com) while routinely violating even the weak rules Onforce setup to guard against abuses, such as requiring that clients pay contractors at least 1 hours time and paying a fee for customer no-shows.
I work for a first-line repair center analogous to GeekSquad.
We offer warranty support under our own brand and for several manufacturers. Some vendors let us obtain parts and do authorized warranty work. Others require us to ship the computers to them or to independent authorized repair centers. When we are the middle-man we still find a way to make money.
There are some problems we don't have the skill or equipment to repair on-site. When we can't do the job right we subcontract that work out to someone who can. Our customers expect quality results and that's what we deliver.
This should explain some of the reasons you get machines from Geek-Squad. As for the misdiagnosed computers you'll have to ask Geek-Squad about that.
They're kinda like buying milk for your restaurant from 7-11. You get no selection for an exceptionally high price. What the geeksquad does is advertise to the ignorant and rake in the unproductive profits. Note: I am a technical consultant who does everything geeksquad claims to do and much more for reasonable prices so this is just their competitions opinion. Seriously though, using them is like buying an iplod because you think it's the only portable media device in existance.
-Tim Louden
Really, we do. They bring us soooo much business it's funny.
We have determined that the Geek Squad geeks are people hired off the street the day before, and are instructed to look at the computer, and recommend that they buy a new computer. (from Best Buy, of course!)
Every attempt that we are aware of that they have actually tried to fix something, we see it a week later to fix what was wrong, and to fix what the geek broke while trying to fix it.
Some of the latest episodes:
- geek browsed customer's computer to a nasty web site and got it infected with spyware and viruses (two weeks ago)
- geek took laptop apart and failed to reconnect cardbus slot connector (that one was today)
- geek told customer he needed a new computer when he needed a new power supply (this happens somewhat frequently)
- geek told customer he needed a new computer because this one is slow, was actually rampant with spyware and viruses (happens all the time)
- geek sold customer another copy of XP because this one was showing it was no longer registerd
The list just goes on and on... funny thing too, we are quite expensive for on-site service compared to others in our area, (we're expensive, but we're good) but the Geek Squad actually is more expensive than we are. I don't see how they get any business, they must have a killer marketing campaign.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
They tell the customer it will take two weeks no matter what the problem, and charge them a (high) minimum fee. After that, the data is typically erased and Windows is reloaded using whatever recovery CD the system needs. Thats one thing I personally think is nice about Geek Squad, they seem to have access to every system recovery CD for all manufacturers and are able to install fully legal copies. Most customers of mine lose their CDs, or their HDD went back & lost the recovery partition. A lot of customers come to me simply because they can't wait two weeks or don't want their data lost.
The sad thing is, after two repairs, you've lost the entire cost of the system.
You can get a brand new computer for cheaper than it costs to repair the broken one. At a certain point it's so cheap to buy a new one that they should just switch the harddrive over and upgrade them. I mean, if they misconfigured windows, so it stopped booting then they need a new harddrive with a new install.
I think it would be easier to just sell a service where they take the contents of your old harddrive and pour it into a directory on a brand new system they sell you for 400 bucks.
Hardware it too cheap to pay to repair it.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Does the name "Geek Squad" kind of offend anyone besides me, even just a little bit?
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You know somebody isn't a repair tech if they're wearing a tie.
If memory serves, IBM field techs used to have a no-real-tie policy. They all wore clip-ons for safety reasons. If your tie gets caught in a printer, do you want to lose your tie or lose your neck?
Of course that was in the days where computer rooms had raised floors and separate air conditioning systems. Dinosaurs may also have been roaming the earth, but I was a child at the time.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
Worked for best buy last year. And geek squad is essentially there to install SpySweeper, Norton, etc. Generally they're supposed to be A+ certified, but they tend to have a lot of computers come in. The guys in our store were generally pretty knowledgable. They tended to have to wipe a lot of HDs. That's essentially their job. I was kinda like the subsititue geek whenever Macs came in. It's stand back and tell them what to do because they recognized I knew far more than they did about them, but of course it was their job and I was a sales guy.
First, I agree that many Geek Squad Agents aren't too bright. However, many are. Where do you think some of the future whatever-you-are's work in high school and college? Yeah, these types of jobs.
I'm lucky that I can say at my store I was surrounded by several other smart guys, and some not so smart guys. Now, occasionally a dumb guy would try to fix something, call it fixed, and mess things up. However, that was an exception rather than the norm. Often the dumb guys would leave stuff in the back with notes on them to have someone smarter look at it :)
You have to really understand the situation these guys are in. On the one hand they've got a stream of customers who (rightly) want their computers fixed. On the other hand they've got managers who don't know anything about fixing computers, and would rather have the Geek Squad guys sell more add-on products than fix things. The managers only care about the bottom line. And only in the short-term.
So often they either have to hurry though something because they're not being "productive" (e.g. not selling enough Norton to people), or don't have the tools / replacement parts to fix things that are broken.
The way replacing parts works is this: If the best buy store sells a comparable part, and the repair is covered under warranty or service plan, then the Geek Squad Agent can pull the part off the shelf, install it, and send the customer home. This only works in a very few cases, unfortunately. Anything else has to go to a vendor for repair. The Agent just diagnoses which part is bad, boxes it up, and sends it out. Again, this isn't because the Agent is incompetant, it's because he's not allowed to fix it.
Now, all software-related problems (drivers, spyware, etc.) are done in-store. They don't ship that stuff out to vendors.
Oh, a note about fixing stuff. It's a common joke to say all that they do is just reinstall windows. In my experience, that's just not the case. However, if you really think about it, often it really is the fastest way to do something. If you're on a tight budget for time, would you rather spend a few hours or days carefully researching and repairing some asinine spyware infestation that's so embedded that no spyware cleaners will remove it, or just spend a couple hours backing up, installing windows, and restoring personal data? It just makes good sense in some cases.
In summary: Geek Squad agents, the smart ones, at least, realize the situation they're in, and try to do the best job they can despite the obstacles thrown in their way by Best Buy and their managers. Before I'm flamed by some Geek Squad employees: I admit that my info is a bit dated. I'm sure some things are done differently now. This is my own experience.
Before I'm flamed by some Best Buy haters: I'm not saying Geek Squad is great, or it's the right thing for everybody. In fact, if you're reading /. and actually reading the comments, then Geek Squad is not a product aimed at you. Bitching about Geek Squad (and services like it) on Slashdot is like a Formula 1 pit crew lead telling an 85 year old lady to change her own oil because Jiffy Lube is a rip off. You entirely miss the point.
I recently had a fix a laptop for a friend that had initially taken it to Best Buy for the Geek Squad to fix. The problem was simply the center pin on the power connecter had broken off and fell into the laptop. After waiting two weeks she got the laptop back and was told it couldn't be fixed. When she told me that I told her no problem just give it to me I'll have it fixed tomorrow.
After opening the laptop I was not surprised to find they had never opened it. This was obvious since all the screws were still secured with their factor thread lock. Also the pin that broke loose was still inside the laptop! 5 minutes worth of soldering and a few screws being put back and the laptop was a good as new.
This is a repair that in my opinion ANY repair service should be able to repair. But since they seem to only hire mouth breathers Best Buy just took her money and when the Idiot Squad couldn't fix it they tried to sell her a new laptop.
I would never shop there based on past customer service (or lack there of) but now they lost of few more customers due to their money grab "repair service"
I killed 3 men and 2 cats to get this sig?
Only problem with that is, Nerds on Site sucks, too. Or, should I say, all the franchises around here suck. Yes, that's right....franchises. I looked into getting into Nerds at one point, and I was told I had to recommend Dell because "They're a power brand, and we want to be associated with power brands, so people think we're a power brand, too!" Whatever the fsck a power brand is. Nothing to do with quality of hardware, quality of service, or anything. Just "they're a name that people recognize, so recommend them." Never mind the fact that all my experience with Dell has been shit. I wouldn't recommend them to anybody, because of that.
The second thing was, I didn't have to have _any_ certifications, degree, diploma.....nothing. All I had to do was pay their franchise fee of a couple of grand, and I was a Nerd.
Any old dolt could get into Nerds, because they have no screening process whatsoever, and their policies obviously suck, so how could I do it, in good conscience?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
As stated here. geek squad job advertisment
Do you have the skills?
DOS, Windows 9x/ME/2000/XP or Apple MacOS
Troubleshooting of Operating Systems and Internet connection issues
Knowledge of computer hardware diagnostic and troubleshooting
Software installations and upgrading
Can install / troubleshoot all computer-related devices (video, sound, modem, printer, scanner, camera, etcetera.)
Have the ability to research online and work through problems
Explain computer-related sales and service options to people shopping Best Buy and over the phone
Geek Squad Agents will work in a fast paced retail environment performing computer-related installations and technical support. Although sales will not be your primary function, let's just face it, when our customers spot a sharp technical mind dressed like an Agent, they can't help but ask a few technology questions. Geek Squad Agents should have the ability to interact with customers while showing respect, courtesy and professionalism. A+ Certification is a plus.
Agent opportunities: Agent must develop customers as they perform on-site repairs, setups and networking, both in homes and businesses, and will assist customers in Best Buy when not on-site. This very responsible person is provided a "Geekmobile" and a parts inventory. Excellent driving record required.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
I've been in many support organizations, and you'd be amazed at the level of incompetence that FLOWS into the call center, and the repair team. Some who can spell "PC" are given the job. As head of a support group that billed $120/hr I can say that there are a fair number of very talented and capable technicians. The problem is that the organizations don't value the knowledge of those employees and they're often frustrated to the point of quitting to find employment that appreciates their talent. I'm speaking for myself and several talented programmers/technicians that I know. You won't find good techs working at Best Buy, or Frys, or CompUSA......
I know a few who will gladly bill $120 - $175 / hour to fix your systems. How much is your data worth? It's certainly not worth $12.50/hr to me or anyone I know.
"Lame" - Galaxar
As a salesman, no. Answering that you don't know does not get you off the hook. I've tried it. The customers assume that just because you work there, you're supposed to know everything about the products you sell. Sure, sometimes you'll get an educated customer who knows what he's talking about, but if that's the case, he won't really be asking you too many questions, would he? ;-)
The wii is the revolution, comrade!
This is a best buy thing, not just a "geek squad" thing. The warranty support I've gotten from BB sucks badly enough I stopped shopping there, and have basically told everyone I know that they're not worth dealing with.
Just like you said, have to send your device (in my case it was an aftermarket car stereo) in over and over again, and it seems to come back without problem A fixed and has new problems it never had before - which then BB says it doesn't have problem A or B. After about 2 months of bringing it back to the store to have it shipped out to be "repaired" and getting it back with "no problems found", they give me shit about how they're not going to honor the replacement policy. When it starts to turn into a scene in front of the customer service desk, it turns into they want to replace my now totally busted unit with a piece of junk nothing near as nice as what I PAID FOR. I asked flat out about a feature I had in my broken unit that the model they wanted to give me lacked, and suggested "Don't you think X is an important feature?" - the question was obviously retorical, but he had the balls to stand there and tell me "No, it isn't important"
Walk into a BB sometime and ask a moderately technical question that a consumer might ask about a computer. I'd venture to say based on people who have gone to BB and then come back to me (the real geek) to double check something that sounded dubious, 6 or 7 times out of ten the BB answer will be total coming-out-of-their-ass bullshit, because they figure you don't know any better.
BB was in some hot water a few years ago here in Ohio with the state's AG over their warranty servicing, trying to sell returned/broken goods as new, etc. I have no idea what ever became of that.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
The Geek Squad, as far as I can tell, is an advertising gimick. Take a lot of pretty pictures of guys in thin black ties. Requisition a series of cars that look really cool but are probably bottom of the line cheap under all that paint. Pay a bunch of teenagers just above minimum wage to wear those ties and drive those cars, and throw a few technical manuals at them hoping that your "Geek Squad" catches on to that incomprehensible tech thing that, despite the marketer's inability to understand it, couldn't possibly be that complicated.
Or at least that they catch on before the customers catch on that the whole thing is a big gimick.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I once declined to charge a customer my diagnosis fee after a geek of said squad had attepted to replace a broken Socket A retainer clip with three tubes of Arctic Silver. After my shop was closed, his manager did not hire me because I was overqualified. Somewhere around here, I have the pictures of the mounds of compound on the poor little Socket A chip.
FairTax baby!
In several cases, I would have been able to fix a problem with the computer right then and there, but because of the type of problem it was, I was always told not to fix it because they would instead have to send the computer out. Yeah, I missed that part in my little rant. It completely floored me when I was presented with problems I could fix and was prohibited from doing so.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I currently work as a Geek Squad agent part-time and I agree with you that there are bright people at Geek Squad.
I don't know about other stores, but a whole lot more than 'reinstall windows' goes on at the tech-bench, like the parent suggests. We have some pretty neat utilities (fully licensed or freeware from all that I've seen, by the way) that do take some of the tediousness out of cleaning a windows box, but i've never seen a reinstallation of windows done unless the hard-drive itself was completely toast. If a problem and solution does not present itself through any of our utilities, we do research the issue and try to manually care for it. As for hardware issues, we have a series of diagnostics we run to confirm issues, and we go from there. I don't see how a Geek Squad agent would determine a faulty hard-drive if the ram was bad instead, unless this was a case of grand error or incompetence. The issues with misdiagnosing POST and boot problems was probably made in a rush.
There are some sticky issues with laptop hardware where we are required to send back to vendor, but real work is done on the machines that we can work on, usually collectively by multiple 'agents' over a span of days.
I don't understand all the rampant hostility towards Geek Squad. The services they provide are not geared towards the power users, but to the average person who is not used to maintaining and repairing their computer. Geek Squad simply fills a niche. Most of the attacks here against the store and its employees seem rather off base and simply ignorant.
Repair or crash? My XP Pro paperweights crash all the time. I just bought a Mac system a month ago and Final Cut crashed once in all that time. With Premiere a single crash in an hour would be cause to celibrate. A single crash in a month with Premiere is like the Loch Ness Monster. People claim to have seen it but most reasonable people have their doubts.
Actually, before Best Buy sunk its venomous teeth into it, Geek Squad really was. It was started in Minneapolis almost 15 years ago by a guy (Robert Stephens) on a bike. The cars, the image, the attitude of the company was all Robert's ideas. They were doing flat-rate pricing before practically everyone and they had Agents whose technical skills would eat the lunches of everyone on Slashdot. The main Minneapolis newspaper retired the "Best Computer Support" category from their annual "Best Of" issue because Geek Squad destroyed the competition every single year. They were supporting the Rolling Stones, Ice Cube, and scores of Hollywood stars because of the phenomenal service they provided and the general counter-cultural "cool" they oozed (this was before Geeks were vogue). They really were a fine lesson in branding and customer service back then.
I had the great fortune of being one of the first Agents hired after Best Buy purchased the company. My badge number gets awed looks from other Agents as the latest hires are in the 3600s and mine is in the mid 100s. We only had about 70 Agents nationwide at that point (Agent badge numbers are never reused) and the 800-number was still staffed by technically compentent people who actually knew computer repair. I had to go through a difficult technical interview and three personal interviews before I got the job. So did everyone else at that time. No one knew who we were and we had to work fucking hard to prove ourselves to the customers. I worked with brilliant and dedicated people and only answered to the higher-ups in Geek Squad.
Fast forward 4 years to the present. Best Buy had done what every soulless corporation does with a great idea. They commodomized the shit out of it, dilluted the quality with shoddy hiring practices, and drove away the best talent by only looking at the bottom line.
They gave all the jag-offs in the store the Geek Squad uniform and made the old Tech Benches into Geek Squad precincts, even though they were staffed with the same underpaid, uneducated, and lazy "techs" that gave Best Buy such a horrible reputation for computer repair. Us old-schoolers screamed bloody murder we they made this decision 2 years ago because we knew what would happen - our great reputation would be pulled into the mud by these knuckle-draggers. Guess what? IT WAS.
I can fix just about anything, set-up any consumer electronic device to work with any computer, and expertly train anyone on about two dozen diffent software titles. Instead of doing that, I spend most of my time fixing other Agent's fuck-ups and soothing angry customers for "Customer Loyalty". Why? Because I can fix shit properly and I'm good with people. Nowadays, Best Buy store managers hire the on-site Agents and generally look for people who will do their bidding, rather than those who know computers or have demonstrable customer service skills. Most of these new guys won't spend the time to improve their skills or learn new technologies. They either restore or have me do the "hard jobs". And God forbid they should download demo software to learn so they can provide trainings.
Best Buy management has had the worst affect on Agent morale and employee retention. They focus only on scorecards, holding Agents responsible for missed budgets even though the in-store sales team is expected to generate 70% of the revenue, rewarding Agents who unnecessarily rape their customers with preposterous upselling, and generally ignore technically skilled Agents or those who provide outstanding customer service. At the corporate level, overhiring has led to hour slashing that has wiped out my last three pay raises. I'
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
1) A customer brought an IBM tower to Best Buy to have viruses/spyware removed. The customer was charged $200, had all of his personal data erased, and the system was still infected. He brought it to us (we're a resonably large, long-standing independent shop), I took pity on him, and then fixed it for free (it was a slow day, and his parents bought me a coffee from next door afterwards :) ).
2) A customer brought in a Compaq desktop that had been repaired at Future Shop (Canadian equivalent of Best Buy, actually burchased by Best Buy a few years ago), complaining that it still wasn't working right. We opened-up the case to find a stack of rubber bands and a very large screwdriver lying across the motherboard (this was a flat desktop system)... Yeah, good times.
I was actually able to recover a substantial amount of the old drive contents, but I had to download a copy of WinXP Home to install. I figure the Lifebook's original XP license was still valid, as there wasn't a substantial change in the hardware... If I hadn't been able to sort it out, Best Buy would probably have put in a 20Gb disk with just the OS and charged more than the 40Gb cost on eBay.
You'd be surprised where else you won't find good techs.
E.g., for the last 4 years I've been sorta a permanent consultant/contractor at a big corporation. You'd think that they could afford competent people, right? I mean, when you have tens of thousands of PCs (quite literally), it pays to have them well set up at least, right?
Well, wrong. PCs always routinely came with some stupidly wrong image installed.
E.g., the batch mine was in came with the wrong IDE drivers. Thank goodness Windows didn't use those, but performance was _abysmal_. You wouldn't believe how slow a fairly modern HDD is with NT 4.0's default drivers in PIO mode. Even stuff like switching between applications took seconds. (I assume that NT swapped some of the old app out, or something.)
E.g., they came with Matrox drivers installed... even though they had Nvidia cards.
Now being crazy enough to do the non-standard thing, I did download the right drivers off the internet and got our boss to give us the admin password to install them. But, you know, (A) I shouldn't have to. Wtf is the IT department for, if I have to do that. And (B) I wonder how many peons in other departments just gnash their teeth and put up with a system that performs like a lobotomized 486.
But let's delve a bit further into this madness...
So at some point it was decided to finally upgrade our RAM. So they send two IT drones to open the PCs and replace the RAM sticks. Easy job, right? I mean, right? Well, you wouldn't believe the uphill struggle that it was on every single PC. The problem? The RAM timings on the new sticks were different. So on every single PC, out of a batch of identical PCs, it was starting again from scratch digging into the BIOS and randomly changing stuff until it worked. You'd think they'd at least be able to remember what they did to the first half a dozen PCs by the time they get to the next one.
One coleague was left with a PC which was proclaimed to work after passing POST. Except it froze when trying to load Windows.
It gets better. They couldn't make one PC work at all, so they took it with them. It came back without the extra RAM, but freshly formatted and reinstalled. They fucking deleted that guy's 2 years worth of work instead of installing the RAM, and didn't even do a backup first. (Well, at least the sources were in CVS, but everything else, e.g., emails, documents he's downloaded, etc, wasn't.) How _does_ one end up formatting the hard drive instead of replacing the RAM? I mean, seriously, at which point are they similar or related enough to accidentally do one instead of the other?
And if you thought that the PC drones are the only ones without half a brain, let's just say that we actually have the whole flying circus. We have DBAs who don't know how to admin a database, and have to be told exactly what commands to run on it. (And occasionally do stupid stuff on their own, like disabling XA transactions on a productive Oracle database, because they thought it just takes up memory and doesn't do anything.) We have Unix admins who don't actually know jack about Unix. And I don't mean as in "not experts." I mean they probably haven't even _seen_ a Unix prompt before, and aren't going to start learning now. Etc.
*sigh* Methinks cost cutting is good and fine, but sometimes people should know when to stop. At the point where such clueless monkeys are hired just because they're very cheap... maybe it's already too much.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Any thing that is misdagnosed, speak to the coders of GS's software"
How often do you actually need to run diagnostic software?
The vast majority of problems can be effectively diagnosed by simply observing the behavior of the system. There should be very few problems that actually require specialized software to nail down, and for home PCs even fewer where it's worth the effort anyways. At my job, our diagnostic tools go down on occasion. Not just degraded, but completely nonfunctional. We still have to get people back online, relying only on their answers to our questions to determine what is going on with their connection and how to get it working again. These are idiots who can't even tell the difference between a PC and a Mac, people who think they have DSL, people who don't even know who their ISP is, people who don't know the difference between a router, a modem, and a computer, people who think that a modem that literally exploded can be brought online. With their eyes and our brains as the only diagnostic tools available, we still have to get them online, and we manage to do so.
"3. We deal with REALLY, REALLY, REALLY stupid people all day long. Many of them barely know how to turn a computer on. "
I work tech support for a cable internet provider. This is no excuse for not getting the job done. I dealt with one person last night that confirmed they had Windows XP. He had a Mac running OS X. I got him online, without breaking professionalism or (noticeably to the customer) losing patience. All tech support positions involve dealing with utter morons, deal with it.
"6. We are so bogged down by corporate BS that half of the time were not allowed to fix certain problems, even if we know how. "
Almost every tech support shop has this. Companies need to ensure that their various locations can all provide the promised services, so they limit the scope of support. And trust me, if one tech does something out of scope for a customer, that customer will tell five friends that the whole company provides that support, and that screws everyone those five people talk to, and when that out of scope support isn't provided- those five friends tell five of their friends how much your company sucks. You want to fix any problem you are capable of fixing? Start your own repair shop.
This reminds me of a true story.
When I got married (early 1990s) my wife knew zilch about computers, even though I was a computer technician. (We figured it balanced out our relationship.) Over the years, I showed her a few things about fixing computers: simple stuff like running utilities, what to check in the OS files, etc. She finally got her own computer in the mid-90s and wanted to learn enough to keep her own computer running well.
During the dot-com collapse, we needed some extra cash. Almost as a joke, she applied for a tech support job at a big publishing firm nearby. She passed the entrance exam and was hired. There were four or five techs on the staff already, every one officially certified from Microsoft, A+, Apple or another relevant agency. My wife was not even remotely certified. Nonetheless, within six months they had fired (and replaced) the other techs, while retaining my wife and putting her in charge of two new techs. She was simply able to work faster than the others, and had a better rate of fixing things the first time around. She left the company when the IT director started making sexist (and sometimes lewd) comments.
Anyway, it was a shining example to me that certification is only worth the paper it's printed on, nothing more. A smart person with only self-administered knowledge (admittedly instructed by someone who had been repairing computers since the 1970s -- me) easily surpassed a small fleet of supposedly highly-trained, certified technicians. What the heck are people getting certified in???
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
They don't do a damn thing. I had a friend ask me to diagnose his laptop one time. Symptoms included spontaneous powerdowns (mostly during gaming), inordinate amounts of heat, and occasional buzzing noises. Anyone with a little computer expertise would recognize this as a faulty fan and/or heatsink. I told him as such. I was wary of opening the laptop myself, as it was brand new. So he took it back to Best Buy to let their Geek Squad deal with it. When he submitted it for repair, he told them about the symptoms. When he got it back a couple of weeks later, it appeared that they hadn't even bothered to check that their "repairs" had worked. They replaced the damn battery. Of all the stupid things I've ever seen, it took them two weeks to replace a battery that didn't need to be replaced in the first place.
At that point I convinced my friend never to purchase from Best Buy again, at least, nothing that will require tech support. When I finally opened the laptop myself, the processor's heatsink was being held on by 1 screw, and even it was loose.
My diagnosis: the Geek Squad does nothing. It was a publicity stunt to make consumers think that Best Buy employees knowledgable technicians, when in reality these so-called "experts" probably spend all day sitting around thinking they're "1337 h@x0rs" because they downloaded TweakXP.
On another occasion I heard a Geek Squad guy tell an elderly couple that hyperthreading was "like having 2 processors in 1." I nearly flipped my lid, but that's a different story for a different day.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
i am a best buy employee and a tech. but not for the retards in teh store. i work at the service center where the geek squad sends stuff they cant fix. it has to be the sadest thing ive ever seen when a geek tries to diagnose a computer. you name it we have seen it. at the stores they ahve maybe 1 out of 10 of the techs know something. but here at the service center 9 out of 10 have been in the buisness for 5+ years and know everything. we dont need those gay software diagnostics programs that they use. we can diagnose based on the symptoms. basically, we know our isht.
90% of us at the service centers are getting laid off. because the corporate retards decided they wanted to take all the computer departments from the 16 service centers and move them to 2. one in chino cali and one to louisville kentucky. they are hiring about 300 geeks to work at these service centers and canning all of us experienced techs. they are calling kentucky geek squad city. sayign its the home of the geek squad.
they are keeping us at the service centers in the dark on the subject and not telling us the exact time were losing our jobs or even telling us if we are getting a severance package. they have also made work 100% harder with cracking down on policies and double the write ups. basically trying to break our spirits to get us to quit so they dont have to pay unemployment or a severance. they have offered us all to move to kentucky but we have to pay to move and to get a place to live. but none of us respectable techs will even think about going there and degrading ourselves to work with these complete idiots they call geeks.
this subject has been kept in the dark and be happy to know that best buy doesnt give a crap about their good employees, they just want to make a buck.
Modded informative? pfffffffft.
I guess it's time for me to pull out my "Certs don't mean jack" story here once again.
Since my sister lives several hundred miles away, I'm saved from most "family tech support issues". Her Win98 computer wasn't running so fast a few years back, so she decided to add more ram to it to speed things up. Her husband took it to his "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" to get the job done.
"MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" proceeded to drop a screwdriver onto the mobo when it was powered up, toasting it, of course. He had the nerve to charge them for a new motherboard, but at least the ram got installed.
I was visiting a couple of months later when my sister mentioned that she couldn't get any sound when she tried to play a CD. As I was already almost seething when she'd told me about the motherboard, I figured I knew exactly what the deal was. I peered in through the back to, sure enough, see that "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" hadn't reconnected the CD audio cable and it was just dangling there. I then grabbed a screwdriver to open the case to connect the cable.
Seems "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" lost the case screws, so "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" POP-RIVETED THE GOD DAMN CASE SHUT.
Another half hour, a drill, and migraine later, she once again had CD audio working.
So, yes... certs might look good on paper, but they don't mean jack when it comes to knowledge.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
... I am a grad student at a Big 10 (11, whatever) university. The woman in charge of computers in our whole building gets about $35k based on her job title. She came into a lab I work in to do some network stuff. She didn't know what RAM is. She "backed up" lab data that was being moved to a new machine (Mac 9 to Mac 10), and she only copied the crap laying around on the desktop and at the root of the HD, not all the stuff in the OS-provided documents folder--in which was everyone's real work. I am an English major. But I've learned to work on my own computer the same way learned to work on brakes after I took my car to a shop and it came back squirting DOT 3 like a geyser. No one really gives a shit about my life and my data the way I do.
I had an old Titanium G4 Powerbook that wouldn't power on. I suspected the battery, and told a "genius bar" guy that. He played with a couple different power supplies, the PRAM reset, etc., and finally broke down and opened a new battery box. Powered right up. Of course I had tried all those things before, but he was following the Apple troubleshooting steps I had read on the net. I'm actually impressed that he didn't go for the easy answer first (since batteries are expensive) and tried all the options. This was at the Tysons Corner store in Virgina.
When it comes down to it, a good tech can evaluate in 5-10 mins whether or not you should just rebuild a PC. Don't know about you slashdotters out there, but personally, I see a computer with viruses on it I tell the customer to nuke and rebuild, we can back up any data necessary. Done, out the door in 2 hours looking brand new, and a bonus of not having to deal with all the OEM "enhanced software" I often tell customers that their computer will most likely run better than when they purchased it. In fact I bet if I ran the numbers on these customers I would have about a 95% non-return rate. THis is because when a PC has been rebuilt by my outfit or any knowlegable geek, we have the standard AVG, antispyware, and our fav Mozilla flavored browser on it renamed "Internet".
Many of these Geek Squad outfits have techs who run an AV and malware check once through while working on 5 other PCs. When the AV turns up negative they shut the PC down and send her back "clean" not noticing the damage that was done or that their browser wont fire up let alone that word will work. Oh and they charged a nice standard fee for that scan they could have done at home.
I guess it breaks down to a lack of pride in workmanship.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Yup.
I think they do that because it's their way of screwing people who buy cheap USB peripherals. Example: those $30 printers they sell in some cases don't come with cables. Oh, it'll come with an AC adapter, but not a USB (or at least the salesperson will insist that it doesn't). Then they hand you the $30 "MonsterCable" USB cable, in the hopes of recouping their profit margin that they didn't get on the printer. I've seen them do this to people over and over, and it's just painful to watch.
The only reason I go into BestBuy is when there's something free, or at a ridiculously low price (their 'loss leaders'). And then I go into the store, get the one item, and leave.
I can go on PriceWatch and get 6' USB cables for around $1-3 a piece, with shipping, from a no-name Mom-n-Pop. I've yet to have one of them fail, but even if they're not the same quality as Monster's, I feel quite comfortable getting one and having nine backups on hand, for the same price.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Personally, I've concluded that Best Buy has lost their focus on the customer and will soon go the way of dinosaurs. The only thing that is keeping them going is demand for high priced ticket items. With gas prices rising, and inflation on the rise, this could change and could very well dink BB.
My observations/thoughts:
a) I learned from a friend of mine that the secret shoppers they hire are instructed to "buy candy and get a receipt". How in the world does buying candy from BB evaluate a retail organization whose primary market is electronics? I realize buying a $2000 tv is expensive for mystery shoppers. However buying candy doesn't accurately measure them either.
b) At the BB closest to me, I cannot buy a tube TV anymore. They do not stock them. Everything is LCD/Plasma. Those are great items to have but not everyone can afford $1000 or more for a TV. Heck I wouldn't want to put that kinda TV in my kids rooms. So at that BB, people w/o the $ (or willingness to spend the $) for high item TV probably don't even shop there.
c) Sales of computer hardware and software, movies and music simply do not have the margins to sustain them. Music (and increasingly movies) are being bought via electronic channels (aka iTunes etc...).
d) downright aweful customer service included (especially) Geek Squad
These things just makes me think they (aka CEOs and BOD) have just lost touch with how to run a good electronics retailer. Patronizing BB isn't going to help them or hurt them IMO. They are already on the path of failure.
I worked in Circuit City's IQ Crew (their answer to Geek Squad) for a while. On our crew, I was the only one there with a tech-support background, having supported machines for the local university for a few years. The others I worked with were the most "tech savy" in the store, i.e. the members of the floor sales staff that could toss the most jargon and confound the customers with the biggest words. My coworkers had all worked selling DVD players and Car stereos and had little to know knowledge of the inner workings of a computer. What's worse is that my supervisor sounded like his only link to information technology was having read PC Installation for Dummies.
Right across the street, and I am quite literal about that, was a Best Buy. Despite the rivalry between the stores, some of my friends worked at the Best Buy so we'd often chat about the day's goings on and swap moronic customer stories. I also got to hear about their Geek Squad. Turns out it was no different there. As we were talking one day, my friend informed me he'd been offered to move up to the Geek Squad from his current job as product specialist in the DVD department. That's right, work there long enough, and they might promote you from floor sales to computer expert!
My advice, never trust either of these places, it drains a mans soul to have to charge $60 to say what's wrong with your computer $10 per gig if you want anything backed up, and then $15-$45 per thing that needs fixing. Working in these teams, promotion has nothing to do with knowledgability and customer satisfaction, it has to do with how much money you can charge a single person to do 20 minutes of work.
I still feel the hole in my essence left from my time there.
IEEE uber alles?
I hate the idea that engineering sciences remain such a high-wizardry subject, and that "Engineers" are people who went to school for engineering, not people who majored in something different but took the time to learn about the subject on their own; You don't need an MBA to be an executive, you don't need a CS degree to be a programmer, and you certainly shouldn't need an EE degree to be an electrical engineer. It's certainly difficult at this day and age to find the knowledge necessary to learn most of the higher EE sciences out of public domain materials (I learned more during my first semester of EE than I did from working with biomorphic robotics with a friend of mine), and I think that's something we should change if we want to stimulate the growth of the Open Source community further.
+5, Truth
As someone who works in the same field, I love Geek Squad. The fact that their ad campaigns are so prevalent around this area and that there are several BBs here (and a good porton of the population that doesn't know any better) means that not only do I never have a lack of work, I also have excellent word-of-mouth advertising.
"That guy fixed all the stuff that even the Geek Squad didnt fix. And he charged half what they did!"
I do a lot of computer repair in my spare time - four days a week in addition to my regular job - and every time I encounter a computer that was "repaired" by the Geek Squad, their work never ceases to underwhelm me. As far as I can tell, Best Buy bought the Geeks on Call franchise and turned it into their own personal commercial army; all I've ever seen the Geek Squad do is overcharge, sell Norton Internet Security (which doesn't even work very well) to home users who didn't need it, and give out incorrect information to clients who don't know better. Someone at a Best Buy store even tried to convince one of my clients that a computer with 256 MB of RAM wouldn't be able to handle DSL; whether he was deliberately lying or just horribly trained, I don't know.
My brother worked at Best Buy for many, many years. The grandparent's post is mostly correct. He'd get peripherals for almost nothing, and even some large appliances like refridgerators that had a massive markup were discounted heavily when he bought them. Some things were weird as how the employee discount worked, like DVDs, CDs, and other stuff that had special conditions, but *most* computer parts and computers themselves fell into the nice discount category, as did televisions, VCRs, DVD players, Receivers, and the like. After awhile they started making employees pay with plastic to try to stop them from buying things on behalf of friends, but I'm sure that it didn't totally curtail that...
He saw the writing on the wall when Geek Squad was coming, and he got himself transferred out of computer service and into the warehouse, where he unloaded trucks and helped customers with bulky purchases. Best, they somehow didn't drop his pay when he transferred, they actually gave him a small raise. He did it while going through college.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I had a similar experience several years ago. I went to the store with a friend of mine because their printer didn't come with a USB cable. He went directly over to the computer section of the store to find the cables and I had decided (or got distracted) to go look at some cell phones along the way. So after looking at a couple phones I decided to go find out what was taking my friend so long. As I was walking over I saw him talking to one of the "computer techs" that was trying to sell him one of these Monster cables with the purdy gold plated ends. I walked up and looked at the price and said that he didn't want to buy the cable because you can pick one up for less than $7 with no difference in performance. That was something the "tech" decided he was going to argue with me about. He said that the cable is able to sustain higher data transfer rates because the ends were gold plated. So I decided to give him a quick lesson by telling him how gold has lower conductivity than copper. Then explained that the only reason gold is even used is because of it's unique property of being highly resistant to oxidizing (for a conductive piece of metal). He started to look upset by this point, so I decided to explain further. I then explained that the only place that it would be of any benefit to use a cable such as the one he was trying to sell would be in a place where there was a lot of EMI, which my friend wouldn't have a problem with. Further, I explained that it wasn't ultimately the wire (in this case) that was the limiting factor of how fast his could send data to his printer. It would be the limit on the standard being used for reliable data transfer (USB) which at the time had a transfer rate of 11Mb/s. The "tech" mumbled that I was wrong and stomped off with a quite upset look on his face. Long story short, don't believe most of what one of these "techs" will tell you since most of the time they have no clue what they are talking about, and are usually just trying to get you to buy the most expensive thing. After all, that's why the get paid $7/hr.
you needed to be more observent. They typically carry a usb hub, with 1 or 2 (cheap) USB cables included for $10.
simular situation to you, I wanted a hub and 3 cables, I walked out with a 2 hubs and 4 cables for under $20 ($10 hub was on sale for $5, usb1 close-out but usb2 hub was also under $15, but what you said was also 100% true, the cheapest standalone cable was around ~$40)
After I graduated with a BS in CS, I went to work for Best Buy so I could have beer money while looking for a real job. They offered me positions in both car audio and PC tech. I took the car audio position because it paid almost double the PC tech position. Really, the "Geek Squad" is just a bunch of warm bodies who can't find anything better.
No, I will not work for your startup